Where everybody knows your name “Got any smokes behind the bar?” I’d ask Pete in between the time I quit buying cigarettes and when I quit smoking them... Aunt Beulah likes to have the last word... Dorothy must have been tall, and probably near-sighted... Delta flight 937, seat 39A afforded a perfect view of Manhattan as the old 737 lurched away from the earth... Robert Harvey is making peace... “Hey, would you get my book? It’s in my bag, on the back of the chair...” My dad used to drive the ambulance for the funeral home in Cozad, Neb... Negotiating a never-ending nap I learned about death when Kansas Grandma died... Of two lives and buffalo grass Most of my dead relatives go to the Walnut Grove Cemetery, where a double lot goes for $20... Spike wanted to become a crappie bed when he died... Ackland’s desk was covered with insects... I always wanted to be in New York City for New Year’s Eve... Ross sees in geometric shapes... Clouds cover the sky above Manhattan today... I live in Nebraska for 35 years, as a kid, a housewife, a waitress and a college student, before I hop in my Ford truck one day and drive away... “Do you believe in destiny?” I ask the doctor of psychology on the Upper East Side of Manhattan... Up the street from where I live, a man is shot 19 times because he is black... Human rights elsewhere, public relations here Madison Avenue is quiet tonight... He’s standing in front of me on line for Frontier flight 581 into Salt Lake City… Oh, the places I shouldn’t have gone I ask for a job . . . They ask me to consent to a consumer report... Something tender this way comes She is not yet half my age when she moves into the house behind mine... The fabric of God is lone and wandering and ceaseless in knowing though strong.... Forever I have known this day, Roused by the rattle of sisters chained Sukreet’s children often join her in the pool after class... “May I speak freely?” asks Caroline the tarot reader... Margaret hides her eyes behind heavy, black-framed glasses... The entire time I knew him, Pao Vu did only one thing. He colored... I am an accomplice to the two young men who pulled the triggers that killed 15 people at Columbine High School... The Right Rev. Darrell E. Berger fears not.... George W. Bush snorted coke. So goes the talk… Monday morning, Times Square, waiting for the No. 9 train. . . . War is glamorous. From it emerge the heroes and the daredevils we all like to imagine we are. . . . Scott was most likely to succeed… What a fine thing it is to be imagined by God and thought well enough of to live.... George is about 65 or so when I meet him on the sidewalk at 81st and Broadway... Princess Thelma meets Queen Louise Thirty-eight years ago when I left the Immanuel Deaconess Institute orphanage… A cabby does a U-turn in front of my building… The lights on the George Washington Bridge hang like twinkling green Christmas... I don’t hear the gun go off… “Please,” he says. “Can you help me... This autumn evening embraces Manhattan It’s a mild winter day in San Fernando Valley… I met Marcus on Thanksgiving Day…. I'd just returned to New York after visiting my folks in Nebraska.... When I first created “600 words,” I wrote about death… No appreciation for brilliance Here’s my brilliant idea, I say… I had just sat down at my computer that day, thinking how lucky I was… I don’t understand this pain… Whoever dies with the most stuff… If Americans share one thing, it’s a desperate need to define ourselves.... While people like me were shaking their heads… pathological narcissists coopted the First Amendment.... It’s in my stomach now… What I really want to do is just get in my Jeep at this very moment and start driving... It was never his tears… It’s difficult to be present with grief.... The practice of meditation teaches us to watch the mind.... I’d be fine except for love... I get up in the morning, it’s a good day... I said to my Journal in September... It was not unusual to find him playing Pong at deadline.... Inside me there is no endless world, but an idea. I am an idea of a Self. MySelf. As surely as if I’d cast mySelf in a movie and played me. ... There is a male cardinal sitting low in my hedge looking straight at me through my window. I naturally suspect treachery, given my turbulent track record with his gender. ... If Nirvana has an address, I don’t think denial is the road to it. I’m not talking about the band. I’m talking about the Sanskrit word for “extinction,” ... I came down with the flu as Luanne lay dying.... A full moon shines over a cloudbank above the Van Nuys Airport where Cessnas and Pipers make night landings like carefree grackles.... It’s been a while. It goes like this. I move 3,000 miles. I get the flu. My best friend dies. I can’t get to her before she does.... How quietly the morning comes. No karate this weekend. I want to be a girl.... It is a Hilton property, a “grande,” resort because USA Today is delivered to the front door.... |